Monday, August 08, 2011

God's good future flowing into the present

For the past few posts, these beginning writings of my memories of Allie's tragic abuse and it's affects on our family, I've only really explored one theme: my own pain; with it you've become acquainted. There are two other strands to our story, however: 1) Allie's suffering and disfigurement, and, 2) Christ working to draw all men to himself.

Number one is obvious. Allie suffered tremendously. This is something that we'll look at and discuss at length. The initial incident in a the bathroom of a rundown San Francisco tenement is only the genesis of the crippling of a perfect little girl. The long lasting result of this devastating event is multiple lives irreversibly altered.

Number two is less obvious. In fact, Christ working to draw men to himself runs a jagged, zigzagging course that runs from fury with God to absolute doubt and abandonment to awe-filled appreciation for the inconceivable wisdom and provision of God. Fury comes easy and is even easier to express. Noticing the wisdom and provision of God is not easy. In fact, to get there, you have to through the experience of doubt and abandonment to arrive at the realization that God is indeed wise and good all the time.

At some point in God's ultimate plan for mankind and his good creation, the whole earth will be flooded with God's goodness and wisdom the oceans are filled with water. This is the future. We need to live now as if we believe the truth about the future. We need to borrow the unlimited goodness that will flood the future and redistribute it here in the present wherever we can. This is the kind of borrowing and redistribution that we will never find the bottom of. That's how Jesus lived when he walked the earth.

· When he reached out to touch a leper, instead of him becoming infected, he transmitted his abundant cleanness to eradicate the leper's disease.

· In the case of an unclean woman with an issue of blood making Jesus unclean as she would have done to others, transformation flows the other way and has the opposite affect; power flow from Jesus to the woman instead of uncleanness flowing from the woman to Jesus. She becomes clean for the first time in twelve (think of it!) years.

· How can Jesus be made unclean? Take that thought further. If Jesus has made us clean, what outside force can make us unclean. Indeed, Jesus said that it wasn't what went into a man that made him unclean, but what came out of him.

· Instead of a dead widow's son at Nain making Jesus unclean, the dead son lived again.

· God's good future is now when Christ is at work. Our lives aren't supposed to be about (only about) managing our own sin and morality. Our lives are supposed to be about changing our world. Allowing power to sacrificially leave ourselves and change lives -really change lives- around us.

Related links

  • Guilt
  • The beginning of San Francisco days
  • How do we live life? Risk it all.
  • A Start
  • I'm Gonna Do It
  • Is there a book anywhere in here?
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